The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Disney has shut down production on the upcoming retelling of The Lone Ranger, which was to star Armie Hammer as the masked man and Johnny Depp as Tonto, with Pirates of the Carribean's Gore Verbinski directing. The issue was one of budget, not creative concerns, according to the article:

The halt is all due to budgetary concerns, not creative differences, sources tell THR. The studio is said to have given Verbinski a firm budget number but the director balked.

“Gore doesn’t want to budge for what he thinks a movie like this needs,” says one insider.

One concern for the studio, according to an insider, is that even though Depp is the biggest star in the world, the project is a western, and the genre is having some dark days, particularly in light of the recent poor showing of Cowboys & Aliens.

“The fact that it’s a Western is a definite concern,” says one source.

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